In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Britain's perception of America varied between a set of colonies, a utopia, a market and an experiment. Macleod examines changing British conceptions of America across the political spectrum during a period of political, cultural and intellectual upheaval. These shifting perceptions are in evidence in the writings of political commentators including Samuel Johnson, Thomas Paine, John Gifford, William Cobbett and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.